THUD..Yup. That is me in a dead faint; I read your post on Spike and am truly surprised that a Spike fan holds both affection and good sense for this character. I hope you feel really welcome, so maybe I can actually watch the seasons through your view of where he was to where he is and to where he needs to go.

I always assumed he prefered being a vampire and was petty level headed about accepting his condition, as he lived it, with a few bouts of shocked madness that seem to be an attribute of those who have humanity somewhere in their ancestry.

As for souls, Joss doesn't believe in them, and uses it as conscience, as a mark of awareness of good and evil and a host of other things. The thing joss is most reliant is the metaphor of death/change. There are religions that don't have souls, either, but then they are a very handy metaphor of light, of enlightenment, of union of perfect opposites e.g. the everflowing river that is the same river kind of paradoxes.

ANYWAY! I do hope you will point out some of your insights in the development of Spike, as I also have problems with him in the basic metaphor of a vampire: the stuckness of their existence. Now maybe that "change" you see so deeply, which I fully admit is blurred ito me n the constant "whine" of what he wants, of what he needs, of what he wishes Buffy would or should think or feel for him, gets in my way. A lot.

And showing that creeping awareness or "becoming" thing (or change OVER TIME v something "forever" in B/A, which remains no matter how much else changes) is in the literary treatment Joss wants to show to reflect Buffy in two opposite mirrors. However he really only sent her to her family (to her fate?) when he died/transfigured and normally his "keeping her with him" does SEGREGATE her from her family in some way iand s my real weakness in seeing Spike as really different, whatever incarnation he heas: the real love, not selfish desire.

I mean, when he chewed out the scoobies who (unbelievably) threw her out of the house, he came to her defense, but he didn't drive it home that THEY needed her more than she needed them because THEY loved her--if anything point out it was HER house, and they all will come with HIM to the crypt for safety, as Buffy wouldn't accept it if THEY were killed in her absence. (I mean we saw Faith was totally not wanting to take on real strategy and leadership).

Besides and couldn't live with it if she died--after all, they already PROVED that in bringing her back.